TRAINWRECKORDS: Nickelback's "No Fixed Address"

I'm not speaking for all Patrons here, but I'd sincerely be happy to pay for the debunking video you just made -- you clearly worked a lot on it, and maybe you'd like a Christmas bonus. (It feels like what I signed up to pay for when I became a Patron, y'know?) That said I can't speak for all Patrons on this, and I'd understand if others don't want to pay -- maybe you could do a poll or something?

I’ve been listening to “She Keeps Me Up” again and it actually has a halfway decent groove. Too bad it’s not being played by anybody but Nickelback.

One of the weirder "I'm so old" moments I've had over the last few years is realizing Nickelback has been around so long there's an audience of adults who grew up listening to them. Which on the one hand should have been obvious, but at the same time everything about Nickelback from about 2000-2012 feels like it took place in a singularity without any forward or backward progression no one could escape of. I think you nailed it on the head -- the worst thing about Nickelback wasn't Nickelback's music, it was how you could not get away from it. Now that we're past their heyday, it's kind of hard to remember exactly why we all thought Nickelback was the worst thing ever, when just kind of a mediocre and repetitive radio rock band. Also, as funny as it is that Nickelback released a disco song as a single, 'She Keeps Me Up' makes a lot more sense when you realize it's about cocaine -- a "Coca Cola rollercoaster" that's "on everybody's faces" and wants to do it "right here on the counter." It's still a terrible song, but it makes a little more sense when you pick up on how all the lyrics are double entendre about drugs. ps, now that the 2010s are far enough away for retrospection, a twisted part of me wants to commission a Trainwreckords about that Chris Cornell album produced by Timbaland. Speaking of ill-advised trend chasing by rockers trying to stay relevant.

Hilarious album and hilarious post-mortem, great work as always. 2013-15 was such a massive sea change for culture in general and there's just no way they could have survived even if they weren't notoriously hated among casual listeners. Some weird, weird stuff came out of that three-year stretch. IMO, 2012 was really the last year for pop music sounding "as we knew it" before the short form content revolution (Vine, TikTok) really hit its stride. Also, I met someone recently who unironically likes Nickelback mostly because it makes them nostalgic for their childhood in the 2000s. That seems to be most of their fanbase these days from what I can tell.

Yeah honestly I don't think this was one of your better episodes and not just because I vehemently disagree with you on this band, the episode just feels a bit unfocused as a whole and honestly i'm not sure this album even counts as a Trainwreckord(I actually did hear those songs on my radio stations quite a bit)just cause their albums aren't selling as well as anymore does not mean they aren't still famous(as albums sales in general in the mid-10s were going down). Personally I think the band's ballads are pretty damn good("If Everyone Cared" is nothing else raised alot of money for charity so that alone makes it worthwhile for me, and I would argue "What Are You Waiting For" isn't just a "love ballad" it's about encouraging you to follow your dreams and it's a song I happen to find very inspiring)for me their worst songs are the ones where they either try a genre that does not fit them at all(Southern Rock with Sister Sin) or are just badly produced("Just One More" from Get Rollin). Also I think saying that most Nickelback fans are Joe Rogan fans is a pretty massive stretch as I really don't see much crossover there at all. Also you got some facts wrong, "She Keeps Me Up" is actually about cocaine("right here on the counter" should be a dead giveaway)and most fans of the band are actually well aware of that song, I don't know many that aren't. I think they do make fun songs and I actually think Chad's voice works well for them, that helps them stand out for me, they don't come off as gross to me at all(BTW "Figured You Out" is a song many haters misinterpret frequently, it's actually about an old babysitter of Chad's and her boyfriend) Also I wouldn't jump to conclusions about that documentary, I groaned when I saw that negative reviews was by Pajiba as I personally cannot stand their reviewing style, they just come off as incredibly toxic and determined to shit on absolutely everything so for me a negative review from hem is a selling point, i'm going to see what the reviews from other outlets I actually respect say about the film.

I wouldn't worry about this script not being funny enough - every reveal in this video hit me like a truck. the unreleased CRJ collab. joey's move to nashville and the subsequent nickelbackification of country production. The hello kitty writing credits. flo rida. but mostly the CRJ collab, which I am now equally deeply invested in, oh my god unrelated: at the height of nickelback radio dominance, I was a kid who used to fall asleep in the car really often, so now chad kroeger's singing voice (amongst a whole bunch of other weird shit) has a pavlovian soporific effect on me. I feel like "sleepiness" is the only incorrect reaction to nickelback, but it's too late for me now. I also only ever caught bits of paralyzer despite it being on all the time. listening to it now, it's pretty good! this video has been highly educational and rewarding for me

I always wonder about the videos for these Trainwreckord tracks where the artist is chasing pop stardom. You're in a set dressed like a club and freakin' Nickelback in 2014 is wearing suits and sunglasses and playing shiny guitars. Do any of the actors and extras have any concept of how lame the product they're contributing to are? Are they just happy to be working? Are they genuinely excited to be in a rock video or to be rocking with Nickelback?

Borderline irrelevant comment from the peanut gallery, but... I kinda legit like this album. It absolutely was never gonna work in the year it came out, but I think a good number of songs on it are enjoyable, and honestly that's all I expect out of a band like Nickelback. Besides, the mere fact that their huge angry protest song was used as the theme for a WWE PPV is just the kind of sublime crossover hilarity that makes it impossible for me to hate on the source.

This has 100% not rotten on the vine. Honestly one of your best and funniest Trainwreckords videos ever.

My band was local openers for them one night before they really broke through. They were mega assholes, and since our lead guitarist and vocalist/bassist were in the two biggest frats on campus and we brought a huge crowd (we were pretty good), we got almost the entire crowd to bail after our set when we told them how awful they were acting. We played in front of about 250, Nickelback played to about 10.

Buttrockers vs. the Hipster Kids is a great point about rock's decline. It's also very funny that 20 or so odd years later the in the know alt kids are going to nu metal festivals. Good ol' 20 year nostalgia cycle.

My main takeaway from this video is that fame was terrible for Nickelback. It did to them what it does to everybody: flattens their narrative into the most basic, easily-digestible pop culture version of itself. Like, yeah, they were bad, but they were bad in distinct and interesting ways that their famously-terrible-band-status glosses over. The fact that they seem to resist leaning into that status, to me, is a sign that they were pretty uncomfortable with their own fame, as well.

Were Nickelback trying to do a djent sound? And no one stopped them?

Just seeing this thumbnail made me do the “100% Jeb!” pose. So excited to watch this after work today.

I've been wanting this for years and it lived up to every expectation. Now just need Green Day's trilogy and I can die a happy man.

Honestly I thought their career was kinda dead by the time Here & Now released but I guess that one didn't do terrible even if it fizzled on pop. Daughtry tried the same approach around the same time and got a minor hit out of it only to make whatever the hell Battleships was. Eh, I'd rather post-grunge bands go the bad pop route than the Aaron Lewis route.

Ah, CanCon caused all these singles to be fucking everywhere up here. Was a terrible time to listen to the radio

Awesome video - Here's my other very minor technical thoughts besides the other comment about the very start. Small audio edit issue at 24:47, 24:49 and maybe 24:52 as well. Also - not sure if you meant to repeat the clip of them talking about the places they recorded during the 25th minute twice like that. 29:02 volume change seems a bit abrupt back to the music. PS. I'm so happy you used the Sickos guy from The Onion in there!

...Congratulations, Todd, you've exposed me to yet another song that I acknowledge is horrible but I now absolutely adore with "She Keeps Me Up."

Oh man am I so glad you brought up Paralyzer by Finger Eleven when we got up to "that" Nickelback song. I unironically love the shit out of Paralyzer and I think more bands probably *should* take inspiration from it......but......oh boy did "She Keeps Me Up" show what a truly fine tightrope act that song was. It can go sooooooo wrong so easily when you try to replicate that.

Watching it! One thought - the opening video of them leaving stage after the rock is thrown at them - I can't help but think there's gotta be a higher quality copy of that out there, its just so 144p. And the watermarks from over the years don't help either. I just know viewers can be fickle, and I'd had for potential new fans to swipe away with it starting with something so low quality. Even cutting out a few seconds of it might help.

Nickleback becoming 2007 Maroon 5 is absolutely hysterical to me. Wow.

This one is really good, Todd. I agree with the sentiment that there's no need to reevaluate Nickelback as somehow making better music than we remember. But I will give them one thing: growing up in Canada — in Alberta, especially — meant hearing a lot of Nickelback because of Canadian radio regulations. They also played live at a lot of award shows and on Canadian television, and always seemed to deliver a really solid performance. IA well-performed fart is still a fart, don't get me wrong, but a lot of bands don't work great live (look at that Imagine Dragons clip in this video).

I thought the "backlash to the backlash" era started when Deadpool defended them while headbanging with Fred Savage. It's the 2010s version of the "Hanson look like girls" joke -- funny at first but the 1000th time you hear it you'd go buy 5 albums just to spite the lazy humor. Also, "If Everyone Cared" is the worst Nickelback song. Photograph is kinda dumb, but at least the lyrics aren't a lost song from a Care Bears movie in the 80s.

I still sing along to “How You Remind Me” when no one’s looking and my wife thinks Chad Kroeger is kind of cute when he doesn’t have his butt rock poodle hair. There. That’s all that Nickelback means to me.

the 30 seconds or so after "...until this" had me doubled over and wheezing

Great video!!!

....I think you finally nailed what the issue with Nickleback was for me. It's not that Kroeger is a bad singer--there's been plenty of great bands with middling lead singers. It's that his tone is *so dark* and there is just no way for him to shake it. If he actually leaned into it he could have been great at goth rock (I think that's probably why teenage me liked some of his early hits) but that doesn't seem like it was his passion.

I live in Canada where they are required by law to play a minimum of 30% Canadian content on the radio, and I have never heard anything off this album until now. And the radio stations up here play a lot of Nickelback

I'm surprised you didn't show that commercial for once upon a deadpool where deadpool actually defends nickleback.

I'm surprised you didn't mention how "she keeps me up" is 1000% about cocaine. It's probably the most on the nose (heh) "not about cocaine but actually super about cocaine" songs ever.

Don't beat yourself up regarding this episode. Just gave it a watch, and its damn good. I always love the way you cover projects like this; it feels like you're walking us through the maze rather than talking over pictures, if that makes any sense.

Todd, just so we're clear, this is a very good episode and thank you for finishing it despite all the setbacks Disco!back was so promising, in a car-crash kind of way, and then we got to Nickelback emulating Imagine Dragons, the band that helped take the heat off Nickelback so the backlash to the backlash could happen in the first place, and it's just so sad. Plenty of big time rock bands have gone pathetically pop in a last ditch effort, and somehow "how the mighty have fallen" just hits extra hard from the Look At This Graaaaaph guys

Todd, I can't believe you of all people waited a full minute and a half into the "She Keeps Me Up" segment to invoke a Maroon 5 comparison, especially right after talking about how they were trying to emulate Imagine Dragons Also Paralyzer still rules Also never thought I'd see you come out as an "I Don't Wanna Be In Love" fan but I kinda love it

I think an editing error at 30:27. I think the word feel got cut off. And another one at 31:33. I think that overlay was supposed to be transparent. This episode shows some sort of "Did they deserve the hate?" series would be cool. It could cover an act before they got big, the break through, the backlash, and the case against the backlash with a final verdict at the end. Yes, I realize this is basically the one hit wonderland format. So many potential episodes. Black Eyed Peas, Boy Bands, Macklemore, Country Music, Vanilla Ice if you're looking for a punching bag episode. A disco episode would be cool. The current revision of disco's history would be like if Dr Dre and Wu Tang only stayed underground and the rap that did stay popular was Vanilla Ice and MC Hammer. Then people 20 years later were all like "Why did people hate rap so much, G Funk was great!".

The funny thing is, Canada was still playing them enough at this point that I heard some of this. I think this album is what taught them to stop.

At around 30:28, when mentioning Imagine Dragons, it cuts off you mid-sentence: "They gave me something I could f..."

There's a weird cut around 30:27, I think you're about to say "feel", but we only hear "f-" before it cuts.

30:27 "they gave me something I could ffff-" I assume that's supposed to be "feel".

I think that laughter at 4:49 is the most genuinely happy I have ever heard Todd being.

Oh goodness, Kroeger wrote Avril's Hello Kitty song? Goodness me, that almost sets up for THAT TrainWreckords episode! Or was it the album after that which was Avril's career-killer?

Finger Eleven’s “Paralyzer” isn’t really an anomaly if you listened to them back when they were called Rainbow Butt Monkeys and weren’t really known outside of Canada. Listen to “Circles”, they actually used to be pretty fun until they changed their name and became boring.

I noticed a couple of times throughout the video where your voiceover cut itself off. Didn't seem intentional. This video had me in stitches by the way I cannot believe Nickelback had an indie rock whistling song and I hadn't ever heard it.

"I'm going to guess most of you didn't know this existed" - you have a Canadian audience, Todd, and we have laws that make sure we know this exists.

OH MY GOD I recognize the bard at 15:07. That's The Foxy Bard, the woman with the bodhran is his partner Twig, and I got to play with them recently at a Faire.

It's actually a pretty novel experience for me to already be familiar with a Trainwreckords subject's hilariously bad single. Not entirely so since I knew Intuition and American Life and St Anger, but still. Back when this album came out Todd was still on Channel Awesome and the forums included a thread where we'd request songs for Todd to review. I don't think he ever engaged with that thread, so it was predominantly a way for us to stay up to speed with developments in bad pop music. That's where I first heard of AJR years before even Spectrum Pulse took a crack at them, much less them hitting Billboard. And that's also where I heard Nickelback's pathetic attempt to ape Maroon 5 in real time. History unfolded before my eyes that day.

LETS FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOO

I'm with you. I hated Nickleback before it was coo l to hate Nickleback. "Rockstar" pissed me off everytime I heard it. Fuckin douche anthem

With all the back-and-forth on whether or not NickelBack actually were that bad, I wonder if we'll be having the same discussion about Imagine Dragons 10 years from now.

I've been keeping up an ultimate "Worst Lines of Trainwreckords" list that includes such examples as "peñius colada", "modren man" and most recently, Ringo saying a slur with "g*****s in flight". If you are reading this, have the time, have watched this new episode, and think you know what the worst line of lyrics from the covered album is that is in this episode, I would appreciate leaving a reply with your opinion. I want to get an accurate consensus.

Can't wait to get home to watch this. This looks exciting

Yowza, I was expecting this to be the long-awaited TrainWreckords on Man Of The Woods, seeing as how JT's getting *NSYNC back together (always a sign when a solo artist knows their time is done), it's been 5 years since he dropped that defecation, and he's been focused on a lot after Britney Spears' book. So I thought this would be the perfect time for that episode. THAT SAID, this may be fun to check out! Let's give it a whirl! *listens* Holy sh- A NickelBack Disco Song was not something I was expecting to hear today!

OH SHIT I CANNOT WAIT